Thursday, January 2, 2014

Two-Way Split / Allan Guthrie

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Author:

Allan
Guthrie developed a taste for writing at school, he is now the author of five award
winning novels. When not writing Allan is a literary agent and co-founded the
e-publisher, Blasted Heath. Born on the Orkney Islands, Allan now lives in
Edinburgh with his wife.

Description:

Robin
Greaves is having a bad day. A PI has confirmed his wife, Carol, is having an
affair with his friend and colleague, Eddie Soutar. Trouble is the three of
them work together and have a long planned job today – robbing a post office.
Then things go from bad to worse when Robin kills the cashier…

Appraisal:

It’s hard
to believe Two-Way Split is the
author’s debut novel. This is a gritty slice of noir that develops additional
layers as it progresses with plenty of twists along the way from a crime novel
into a psychological thriller. Description is thin on the ground, resulting in
fast paced prose where the reader is right in the midst of the action – no
words are wasted.

Guthrie
neatly sets off four arcs. First, he immediately creates tension and mystery
when, in the opening pages, Robin meets the PI to discover his wife is having
an affair. Robin reacts badly and strikes Gray. There’s clearly something dark
simmering in Robin’s mind.

We then meet
Pearce. He’s an ex-con, just finished a ten year stretch for murdering the drug
dealer who supplied his deceased sister and is currently (albeit reluctantly)
employed as a debt collector for a local crime boss. He’s big and tough. Short
on temper, long on morals.

Three,
there’s Kennedy, he works for Gray and under the latter’s instruction follows
Robin when he leaves the PI’s office. Finally, there’s Eddie and Carol, Robin’s
partners in crime, but now his betrayers as well.

Robin can
barely suppress his feelings when they meet. His head is all over the place.
But meet they must because they’ve been planning a robbery at a local post
office. Eddie and Robin go inside, with Carol as the driver. Violence is
Eddie’s key to maintaining control, but it goes horribly wrong and the cashier
winds up dead, all witnessed by Kennedy. The cashier, howeve,r is Pearce’s
mother and he sets off to gain revenge on her killer.

If this
sounds horribly complicated, that’s my fault, because it’s not. Guthrie manages
the strands well and gradually draws them together. He employs a ‘ticking
clock’ with each section opening with the time to enhance the pace and tension.
However, this novel is much more than greed, murder and revenge. Robin’s mental
state deteriorates and Two-Way Split
then encompasses his collapse and the aftermath, whilst in parallel Pearce is
closing in, aided and abetted by Kennedy and Gray for their own ends. I’d love
to say more here, but I don’t want to give the story away.

I
thoroughly enjoyed Two-Way Split. The
characters are well drawn, the dialogue is excellent. The sense of place is
almost entirely up to the reader to create, as mentioned previously the
descriptive element is kept to a minimum. Just enough of a brushstroke to give
a sense of the background. Difficult to do, but Guthrie pulls it off. All in
all an excellent read.

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